Many years ago, Vine Deloria Jr. remarked that American Indians cycle into style every few years, only to cycle out again. He may have to update this assessment to reflect the fact that it seems Indians are here to stay, at least in the consciousness of consumers who want to own a piece of Indian country and the scholars, both Indian and not, who turn out books on an increasingly regular basis on the producing, buying, selling, and appropriating of American Indian performances, representations, and cultural objects. In Selling the Indian, editors Meyer and Royer do not pretend to be doing anything particularly new in putting together these interesting pieces. Their goal, in fact, is modest: to add to understanding of the ways that cultural imperialism has operated in a variety of contexts: world’s fairs, “savage Olympics” (p. 11), flute performances, Indian fairs, museums, tv programs, and tourist shops; and how cultural imperialism is reflected in a variety of objects: flutes, baskets, pottery, dance hoops, romance novels, and pillowcases. The attempt is successful, if uneven, with the stronger pieces clustered in part 2, “Marketing the Indian,” where political scientist Erik Trump, historian Carter Jones Meyer, American studies scholar Sarah H. Hill, and ethnomusicologist Chris Goertzen provide political-economic perspectives on ways that the production and marketing of Indian arts have been deeply influenced by colonialism, neocolonialism, poverty, violence, gender inequality, and internally and externally imposed reform.

These influences are also present, although to a lesser extent, in the analyses carried out in part 1: “Staging the Indian.” In the first chapter, “The ‘Shy’ Cocopa Go to the Fair,” anthropologist Nancy Parezo and historian John Troutman sketch the events that led a group of Cocopa of the lower Colorado River to travel to the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition to be part of a “living history” exhibit illustrating a “narrative of human progress” (p. 8). In this exhibit, the Cocopa were to typify movement from the “Law of the Maternal Family” to a stage at which people organized confederacies and more astutely recognized paternity. Although the stated purpose of this chapter is to highlight the decision-making agency of the Cocopa in the face of social Darwinist agendas, the stronger picture is that of the failure of fair organizers and scientists to protect Indian workers and consultants from economic exploitation and the often lethal ravages of malaria and tuberculosis.

The combination of economic necessity and a desire to control cultural production and representation that impelled turn-of-the-century Cocopa to travel to St. Louis is also a factor in the contemporary Native American exhibitions and performances examined in part 1. Performance-art historians Katie N. Johnson and Tamara Underiner look at the Faustian pact undertaken by Native performers at Tillicum Village, a tourist attraction located near Seattle, where visitors wander through longhouses, eat “authentic” Indian smoked salmon, and view a dance spectacle that provides a 30-minute condensed introduction to Northwest Coast Native society. The jury is still out regarding how much these performances are really under the control of the diverse Native group that enacts them or to what extent “subtle moments of active resistance” (p. 57) can prevail amidst the demands of a ravenous tourist market.

Ethnomusicologist Pauline Tuttle pursues similar questions in her sympathetic piece on the well-known Lakota hoop dancer and flute player Tokeya Inajin (Kevin Locke), who weaves aspects of Lakota and Bahá’í traditions in what Tuttle describes as the intersubjective, sacred space of American Indian dance and musical performance. Building on Locke’s own words (drawn from a variety of texts), Tuttle lays out the varieties of what is erroneously lumped together as “Indian flute music” and provides an exegesis of hoop dance symbolism. The communicative universalism that inheres in aspects of hoop dancing recalls Black Elk’s messages while remaining consistent with Bahá’í beliefs. A weakness of this otherwise instructive article, however, is its failure to achieve enough distance from Locke to allow much of it to read as more than a detailed biography.

Anthropologist S. Elizabeth Bird’s “Savage Desires: The Gendered Construction of the American Indian in Popular Media” examines ways that American Indian men and women have become both sexualized and desexualized “in relation to the white gaze” (p. 63) in the context of captivity narratives, romance novels, films, and the television programs “Northern Exposure” and “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.” Although Bird successfully lays out the “bifurcated” images of the female princess/seductress and male warrior/abuser (with an interesting discussion of the ever-present “Wise Elder”[p. 75]), the article is marred by a tired, monaural argument that sets up the anthropologist as the primary villain in the construction of these narratives.

By contrast, Erik Trump’s opening piece in part 2 on white women reformers’ attempts to revitalize American Indian economies by developing Indian arts and Carter Jones Meyer’s account of the relationship between Collier-era political reforms and the commercialization of Pueblo peoples provide nuanced accounts of the complexities of Indian-white relations in the workshop, museum, and souvenir shop. Trump’s article in particular provides a poignant account of the double bind that white women found themselves in as they often wrongheadedly turned their energies to getting Native women’s artistic accomplishments valued in the marketplace. Meyer’s focus on the work of luminaries Edgar L. Hewett and Mary Austin, particularly when they were at odds with John Collier and with each other, provides an excellent window into the analytic inseparability of Indian policy reform, tourism promotion, paternalism, and the diversity of opinion held by early anthropologists regarding the best ways to address the Indian question.

The final two articles in the book bring us into intimate contact with objects that can tell us stories if we are patient enough to unravel their historical, cultural, and personal significance. Sarah Hill’s focus on the multiple processes that led to the production of Cherokee baskets for a variety of markets before World War II brings to our awareness the very different ways that “social missionaries,” cultural revivalists, Indian Reorganization Act reforms, and WPA work influenced Western and Eastern Cherokee basket makers, most of whom were women looking to enhance their household income.

The book concludes with Chris Goertzen’s detailed study of the contexts in which a Mayan huipil-inspired pillow cover was created. This is the only piece in the book that takes us south of the Rio Grande, and it succeeds in tying together the ways traditional craftsmanship, gender relations, political and structural violence, and cultural resistance converge in a global tourist industry. Goertzen’s main point, that the objects and experiences we purchase reflect our reluctant if necessary participation in the tourism economy, can readily be applied to each contribution to this fine collection. As we reflect on the “highly corrosive process” (p. xi) of cultural imperialism, these articles bring to our attention the ways that the intersections of science, commerce, empire, globalization, and nation-building necessitate continuing skepticism regarding the “objective good intentions” of scientists, capitalists, and reformers alike.